A senior federal public servant is facing the prospect of time behind bars after emailing sexualised images of young children to a person in the UK.
The Canberra man, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, pleaded guilty in the ACT Magistrates Court last week to a charge of possessing child abuse material.
The plea followed several months of negotiations between Commonwealth prosecutors and his lawyer.
Agreed facts tendered to the court showed the offender sent the email in question on or about April 29.
The message contained two "computer-generated images of pre-pubescent children in sexual settings".
The man's email account was suspended shortly after he attached the objectionable files. It was unclear whether they ever reached the intended recipient.
Less than a month later, investigators from the ACT Joint Anti-Child Exploitation Team raided the public servant's home and seized his Apple MacBook Pro laptop.
During a subsequent forensic examination, police found the two images and "additional child abuse material".
The man was not charged over the extra material, however, because it was "not possible to establish whether or not the files ... appeared there due to an automated process of the computer or by user input".
Magistrate James Lawton last week committed the offender to the ACT Supreme Court for sentence.
The man, who is on bail, will appear there for the first time in February. He faces a maximum penalty of 15 years in jail.
